NewEnergyNews

Gleanings from the web and the world, condensed for convenience, illustrated for enlightenment, arranged for impact...

While the OFFICE of President remains in highest regard at NewEnergyNews, this administration's position on the climate crisis makes it impossible to regard THIS president with respect. Below is the NewEnergyNews theme song until 2020.

Editor’s note: So much has changed since this story ran that it might now be thought of as a eulogy for the Clean Power Plan, may it rest in peace.

Despite the recent legal roadblock from the nation’s top court to the Obama administration plan to regulate climate change-inducing pollution, executives from one end of the utility industry to the other say they don’t see their plans changing much. A survey of more than 500 utility executives conducted by Utility Dive in early 2016 showed that a large majority supported the EPA's Clean Power Plan, which aims to cut U.S. carbon emissions 32% by 2030, and a significant portion wanted to see it strengthened. Add that to a recent report from the Rhodium Group showing that the extension of key tax credits for renewable energy in 2015 will fuel strong growth for wind and solar despite the plan's judicial difficulties, and it appears the U.S. power mix will continue getting cleaner. But while the general trajectory of the power sector appears set, analysts say the Clean Power Plan would have had a significant impact on how the transition unfolds.

President Obama has long been dedicated to cutting U.S. emissions by driving a transition to cleaner utility power mix with more emphasis on renewables, natural gas and other low-carbon technologies. His administration spent its first two years trying to pass an energy bill with a cap and trade plan. But it was blocked in Congress, so the EPA issued the Clean Power Plan (CPP). Opponents sued the EPA, claiming the plan overstepped limits set by the Clean Air Act. Yet utility industry plans have not changed significantly. Industry executives have been planning for a power mix shift for some time, according to Utility Dive’s State of the Electric Utility 2016 survey. Collectively, 72% see natural gas moderately or significantly increasing in their power mixes over the next 20 years, 77% see wind doing so, and 91% see utility-scale solar doing so… click here for more

Editor’s note: Since this story ran, the effort by utilities and consumers to seize the DER opportunity has accelerated.

In the most recent Utility Dive State of the Electric Utility survey, 60% of utility professionals surveyed said their utilities should partner with third party vendors to deploy DERs, up from 56% the previous year. But nearly the same amount (59%) said they thought their utility should own and operate DERs, rate-basing their investments in the technologies. These two seemingly contradictory strategies being explored by utilities suggests they are still considering options for DER-centric business models and may even be pursuing multiple opportunities. As utilities across the nation move toward a less centralized power system, many of them are learning about how to operate and deploy distributed resources through rate-based pilots, which may help explain the popularity of the utility ownership option for DERs.

As utility leaders mull how to enter the DER market themselves, they are also considering how to respond to the steady proliferation of distributed resources already taking place throughout much of the nation. As consumers increasingly generate and store their own electricity, they pay less to the utility, decreasing its revenues. The problem is accentuated by the fact that 74% of utility executives’ expect minimum or stagnant load growth in their territories and another 9% expect declining load growth. Only 18% expect the load in their territories to increase. In response, utilities across the nation are moving to change their rate structures so they can better recover costs from customers who install DERs like rooftop solar or residential storage. But many rate structure reforms would effectively impede the DER value proposition and slow progress…The goal should be rate structures with price signals that drive DER owners to deliver power at periods of peak electricity demand so they become grid assets, rate design experts say… click here for more

Editor’s note: This type of effort is likely to accelerate during the Trump administration as the energy sector’s attention moves to the state level>

As new energy technologies proliferate and eat into electricity sales, utilities and regulators are searching for a rate design that addresses growing load defection. Regulators are increasingly considering performance-based regulation as the key get more reliance on energy efficiency, peak load management, distributed generation and storage because it is becoming more difficult to make the longstanding cost-of-service regulation work. With cost-of-service regulation, a utility’s revenues come from investment backed by a guaranteed rate of return built into its rates. With this structure, utilities do not get financial incentives to address evolving electric industry challenges such as changing customer demands, growth of distributed energy resources, and changing federal and state policies.

Creative rate alterations, from cost trackers to decoupling, are attempts to remedy this shortcoming. They have been so widely adopted that there is no longer “pure” cost-of-service regulation. Performance-based regulation is a more comprehensive alternative. It is based on strong performance incentives and a pre-set long-term rate escalation. The aim is to change how rates are set to streamline regulatory burdens and allow utilities more flexibility to innovate. When it works, the utility and its customers share benefits. It is not a one-size-fits-all construct and can be applied in different ways… click here for more

Wind power is one of the fastest growing sources of new electricity generation in the United States. Cumulative installed capacity was more than 74,000 megawatts (MW) at year-end 2015 and wind power supplied 4.7% of total 2015 U.S. electricity generation. Despite the growth of the wind power industry, the distributed wind market has remained limited. Cumulative installations of distributed wind through 2015 totaled 934 MW. This first-of-a-kind exploratory analysis characterizes the future opportunity for behind-the-meter distributed wind, serving primarily rural or suburban homes, farms, and manufacturing facilities.

This work focuses only on the grid-connected, behind-the-meter subset of the broader distributed wind market.1 We estimate this segment to be approximately half of the 934 MW of total installed distributed wind capacity at year-end 2015. Potential from other distributed wind market segments including systems installed in front of the meter (e.g., community wind) and in remote, off-grid locations is not assessed in this analysis and therefore, would be additive to results presented here. These other distributed wind market segments are not considered in this initial effort because of their relatively unique economic and market attributes.

Opportunities for behind-the-meter distributed wind are considered from three perspectives: addressable resource potential, economic potential, and market potential. The first of these perspectives is intended to frame the overall scale of the opportunity2 ; the second quantifies the potential capacity of systems that could generate a positive net present value (NPV) at a specific point in time; the third considers economics as well as consumer adoption behaviors to estimate potential deployment levels for the specific conditions assessed.

For addressable resource potential, we identify a single estimate for all theoretical behind-themeter distributed wind applications. We use scenarios or an array of future conditions to more fully explore economic and market potential. Variables in our scenarios include capital and operation and maintenance costs, technology performance, the value of distributed generation, system financing and leasing costs, consumer adoption rates, and siting criteria. More details on the scenario framework including the Combined scenarios as well as explicit Low, Reference, High, and Breakthrough values are provided in Section 1.1.

Consistent with prior distributed generation analyses conducted at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory and as a first assessment of the opportunity for behind-the-meter distributed wind, this work does not consider potential competition from alternative distributed-generation sources such as rooftop solar photovoltaics, assumes federal and state tax incentives and renewable portfolio standards as legislated, and may not capture all costs of integration into the distribution network. Also, consistent with prior work, net metering and siting setbacks are varied within the range of existing policies today.

The addressable resource potential of distributed wind is large, potentially supporting millions of systems and thousands of gigawatts (GW) of power production capacity. We define addressable resource potential as the maximum amount of wind resource in the continental United States that could be sited proximal to electricity demand and constrained by key siting considerations in those areas (see Section 3). As currently estimated, the addressable resource for distributed wind does not account for potential alternative uses of developable land by other power generation technologies, including multimegawatt utility-scale wind facilities.

In aggregate terms, the addressable resource potential for distributed wind exceeds the total U.S. electricity demand. Submegawatt-scale (<1,000 kilowatts [kW]) distributed wind turbines could provide up to approximately 3.0 terawatts (TW) of capacity, and with current wind turbine performance levels could produce 4,400 terawatt-hours (TWh) of annual energy generation. The Energy Information Administration reported the total U.S. electricity demand in 2015 to be 3,700 TWh. Megawatt-scale turbines, which can serve behind-the-meter loads for large commercial or industrial users, could provide an additional 5.1 TW of capacity and 14,000 TWh of annual energy generation.

Focusing on sites that can generate a positive net present value under Reference scenario conditions,3 42 GW of capacity is estimated to be economically viable in 2020; this quantity decreases to 19 GW in 2030 and settles at 37 GW by 2050 (Figure ES-1). These estimates limit site-specific potential to quantities required to serve on-site load, but may include turbines of any size depending on the load to be served; relevant financial characteristics are also considered. Estimates are annual and reflect several time-varying trends—the most important of which is that the production tax credit and associated investment tax credit options are not extended. These tax credit expirations drive the decline in observed potential between 2020 and 2030. Additional important factors are technology-cost reductions and the evolution of the netmetering policy, which is assumed to expire as anticipated in current statutes.

Considering more favorable (for distributed wind) technology, finance, and retail electricity rate conditions associated with the Combined High scenario inputs,4 the 2030 and 2050 annual outlooks for economic viability are improved for residential, commercial, and midsize turbine classes (Figure ES-1). In this scenario, an estimated 48 GW of capacity could be economically viable in 2030, with more than 85 GW in 2050. Under these more favorable economic conditions, factors beyond direct costs including consumer adoption, access to finance, siting policy, and competition from alternative distributed-generation sources are anticipated to become increasingly significant in determining market potential.

Although these estimates suggest conditions under which large quantities of distributed wind could become economically viable, there are significant uncertainties and anticipated regional variation in key analysis assumptions that may alter the economic landscape for behind-the-meter distributed wind. Economic potential estimates are highly dependent on assumed retail electricity rates, the presence of net energy metering policies, financial incentives, and financing costs. Although highly uncertain and partially captured through the scenario framework applied here, these factors are likely to vary by state and local jurisdiction.

When considering consumer adoption trends, Reference scenario inputs5 suggest an opportunity for approximately 1.5 GW of cumulative deployed capacity in 2030 and 3.7 GW in 2050 (Figure ES-2). Assuming behind-the-meter applications are approximately half of today’s installed distributed wind capacity (approximately 500 MW), this represents an approximately300% increase in the market by 2030 and a nearly eight-fold increase (three doublings) in cumulative capacity by 2050.

The Combined High scenario6 suggests a multiplicative effect associated with an array of conditions becoming more favorable for behind-the-meter distributed wind, and results in a cumulative market of 3.9 GW in 2030 and nearly 20 GW in 2050 (Figure ES-2). Cumulative capacity in the Combined High scenario reflects a nearly eight-fold increase in the next 14 years—by 2050, installed capacity is increased by a factor of approximately 40, or more than five doublings of cumulative capacity. Despite sizable near-term cost reductions and robust economic potential across turbine classes, consumer adoption rates applied here indicate a relatively limited ability to improve the near-term (2020) outlook for these systems.

This first-of-a-kind assessment suggests that there could be a substantive role in the nation’s electricity future for behind-the-meter distributed wind. Notwithstanding some potential overlap with the multimegawatt-utility-focused wind power resource and the current exclusion of competition from other distributed generation resources, its resource is large, and there are conditions under which the economics for large quantities (tens of gigawatts) become viable over time. To realize the opportunities presented by scenarios that consider relatively favorable conditions for behind-the-meter distributed wind, our analysis suggests that technology cost reduction, including cost reductions in balance of plant and installation, and performance improvements are necessary but not sufficient conditions to foster more robust growth. Finding mechanisms to facilitate and encourage consumer adoption as well as develop new business models that can access low-cost capital, support turnkey solutions, and drive industry-wide efficiencies are also anticipated to be essential components of a vibrant market.

“…With its proximity to the Arctic, Alaska is warming about twice as fast as the rest of the United States and the state is heading for the warmest year on record. The government has identified at least 31 Alaskan towns and cities at imminent risk of destruction…[Some, climate change experts predict, will] be uninhabitable by 2050, their residents joining a flow of climate refugees around the globe, in Bolivia, China, Niger and other countries…These endangered Alaskan communities face a choice. They could move to higher ground, a wrenching prospect that for a small village could cost as much as $200 million. Or they could stand their ground and hope to find money to fortify their buildings and shore up their coastline…[B]oth staying and moving have their perils...The process of relocation can [be disruptive, and] take years or even decades…But few government agencies are willing to invest in maintaining villages that are menaced by erosion and flooding, especially when the communities are planning to pull up stakes…”click here for more

“…[U]tilities are doing everything to kill the [consumer-owned] solar boom [at the regulatory level and in ballot measures] before it gains too much traction…[V]oters have fought back and beaten [many of] the efforts to squash solar energy…[R]esidential solar companies Tesla, Vivint Solar, Sunrun, and SunPower…[are] winning the policy war against utilities, and as they do, it'll open a larger and larger market across the country…Despite utilities' spending $26 million to pass a referendum that would have undermined solar economics in the state, Florida voters rejected the utility referendum…In Nevada, less than a year after the public utility commission essentially killed the rooftop solar industry, residents overwhelmingly voted to [require the Berkshire Hathaway-owned NV Energy to give customers] energy choice…[Attempts in Wisconsin to add fees to utility bills] were rejected by the court…When solar energy goes on the ballot or to the court, it wins. That should have every utility in the country frightened…”click here for more

“…Donald Trump denied to the New York Times on November 22 that he asked leaders of Britain’s movement to exit the EU to work against the installation of wind turbines off the coast of his resort in Scotland…The UK Independence Party (Ukip), prominent in the campaign for the UK to leave the European Union, says Trump urged the party to campaign against the development of wind farms…in the weekend after his election win…[Then Mr. Trump said turbines are not made domestically, steel is emitted into atmosphere during turbine manufacturing, turbines kill massive amounts of birds, and they require large subsidies but]…[few] wind turbines are shipped globally [and more] than 21,000 US factory workers make a majority of US wind farm content…The US wind power supply chain consists of more than 500 active factories in 43 states… [with high domestic content] for nacelle assembly (>85%), towers (80-85%), and blades and hubs (50-70%)…[Steel is not emitted during manufacturing]…Wind turbines kill fewer birds than do cats, buildings or the fossil fuel industry…[and no] major national environmental organisation [opposes well-sited] wind development…”click here for more

Monday, November 28, 2016

TODAY’S STUDY: Getting More New Energy On The Grid

Marlene Motyka and John McCue, November 2016 (Deloitte Center for Energy Solutions)

Executive Summary

The ongoing electric power industry transformation has ushered in a wave of variable and distributed energy resources on electric grids across the US and globally. Wind and solar installed capacity soared 85 and 1,169 percent, respectively, in the US from 2010 to 2015.1 And now resources such as battery storage, home energy management systems, and electric vehicles appear poised for strong growth. Forces propelling the overall power industry transformation seem to be some of the same ones prompting this flood of new resources— the drive to reduce carbon emissions from the power supply; to deploy rapidly improving technologies as they travel down the cost curve; and, to respond to changing customer needs and expectations.

US deployment of variable and distributed energy resources accelerated from 2008-2015, with a surge of utility-scale wind power in wind-rich areas such as the Midcontinent. It then gathered momentum with grid-scale solar plants in the West and Southwest, and it is now spreading swiftly down the electric power value chain, as grids in many regions become increasingly decentralized and host a growing number and variety of distributed energy resources (DER).2 Wind and solar power are variable energy resources (VER), labelled “non-dispatchable” since their output is dependent on weather conditions. While they bring many benefits, integration of these resources can be challenging for grid operators, who must ensure generation and load remain in constant balance and power quality is not compromised. Fortunately, there is a large and growing toolbox of solutions to manage wind and solar variability, including the increasingly promising potential of dispatchable DER, such as energy storage, demand response, and (non-variable) distributed generation sources like fuel cells, natural gas-fired turbines, and combined heat and power systems (CHP).

Whether variable, non-dispatchable resources reside at the transmission or distribution level, the industry’s capacity to integrate them is evolving rapidly. Those who see their potential as limited because they are difficult or costly to integrate may be underestimating the capacity for electric systems and markets to innovate. So far, US utilities and grid operators in some regions have successfully integrated annual VER penetration levels of up to 30 percent, with 13 states generating more than 10 percent of their power from VER in 2015, eight states above 15 percent, and three exceeding 20 percent.3 Short-term or “instantaneous” VER penetration levels—for hours at a time—have surpassed 50 percent and even reached 60 percent in some areas, while maintaining a high standard of reliability.4 Some European countries have supported even higher levels. Costs have generally not been prohibitive in the US, with the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) estimating integration of its first 10,000 megawatts (MW) of wind capacity at roughly $0.50 per megawatt hour (MWh) of generation.5 Early forecasts that substantial new generation must be built to back up variable resources like wind and solar power are also not playing out, as the industry innovates and modernizes the grid to increase its responsiveness and flexibility.

How are grid operators handling the growing influx of variable resources? By deploying a broad set of solutions such as expanding transmission; tapping dispatchable, centralized generation resources as well as DER; and deploying energy storage. This paper focuses on the growth path of VER in selected US states and countries with the highest current or projected penetration of these resources, and the benefits and challenges they pose for grid operators. It explores the variety of solutions being implemented across regions with high or rapidly increasing VER penetration, and discusses how dispatchable DER can play a growing role in those solutions.

The discussion concludes that building new generation or transmission assets are not the only solutions for integrating VERs, and they may not be the most cost-effective ones either. Greater potential may lie in redesigning and expanding markets, improving coordination across regions, and most of all, taking advantage of the vast, often unused potential of DER. A growing legion of power-generating or load-reducing resources resides on the distribution system, often behind the customer’s meter—and new tools and market designs to help utilities harness them are continually being developed. In many instances grid modernization investments will be needed to enable greater deployment of DER. As utilities add smart sensing, communications, and control technologies to the grid, the system gains the flexibility to incorporate DER both operationally and economically, and this in turn may enable smoother VER integration.

As states and countries continue down the path toward low or no-carbon energy supplies, the role of variable and distributed energy resources will likely grow and VER integration tools are expected to become increasingly critical. While integrating VER can be challenging for grid operators, in reality these resources have been integrated at higher levels than expected,69 reaching nearly 44 percent of power generated annually in Denmark without impacting reliability. In the US, costs of VER integration have generally been lower than analysts predicted, largely thought to be because the set of tools for integrating them has been expanding. We expect it to be increasingly important to deploy VER integration solutions as penetration rises. In some European countries, such as Germany, rapid VER adoption occurred before some of the solutions described here could be implemented, which contributed to supply-demand imbalances and rising electricity prices. Germany is now pursuing policies to slow VER growth and implement DER solutions such as demand response, CHP, and storage. Another area with rapid VER adoption, the Australian state of South Australia, is reviewing its integration strategies and particularly its wind plant settings that interface with the electric grid, after a recent storm-related blackout that involved, though was not caused by, several of the state’s wind farms.

Across the globe, solutions that were originally thought to be the primary tools for VER integration, such as building backup power plants, have not been used extensively. Instead, operators are relying more heavily on solutions like improved weather forecasting, expanded regional and inter-regional coordination, and perhaps most significantly—on a growing wave of DER that is becoming increasingly accessible to operators as the grid is modernized and new market services and technologies become available. Grid modernization seems particularly critical to unlocking the potential of DER, just as it is to improving efficiency and cutting costs across all grid operations. An “intelligent grid” would allow operators to monitor, analyze, manage and control the VER and DER on the system.

While once viewed primarily as a threat to utility business models, DER are beginning to be seen as valuable tools to add flexibility to the grid and integrate growing volumes of VER cost effectively. As grids evolve into two-way energy platforms, electricity markets are also evolving, and may increasingly acquire characteristics of the new “sharing economy,” as customers make their DER available to utilities and grid operators to balance the grid. In this environment, utility planners are starting to see DER more as enablers, rather than competition, and increased coordination across systems, markets, and resource owners as the most effective and efficient solution for integrating VER and DER.

“…[Addressing a group of scientists that included theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking, Pope Francis urged national leaders] to implement global environmental agreements without delay, a message that looked to be squarely aimed at U.S. President-elect Donald Trump…[It was the Pope’s] strongest speech on the environment since the election of Trump, who has threatened to pull out of the 2015 Paris Agreement on climate change…Francis, who wrote an encyclical, or papal letter, on the environment last year, took a swipe at those who dispute that climate change is caused by human activity, criticizing ‘the ease with which well-founded scientific opinion about the state of our planet is disregarded’…During the campaign, Trump called climate change a hoax…Last week he appeared to soften his stance…[saying] he was keeping ‘an open mind’ and that there might be ‘some connectivity’ between human activity and global warming…[But then his designated chief-of-staff said] the president-elect still believed climate change was mostly ‘a bunch of bunk’…”click here for more

“…Bland’s Solar & Air [is next to the Village Pet Market, two doors down from Trader Joe’s] in a nondescript strip mall…[It] looks a little like a car dealership, only for personal electricity generators from the sun. The unusual storefront is, solar experts say, the largest, most comprehensive solar power showroom in California, with not only panels but also actual rooftops with the systems mounted for potential customers to see…[There are three 5,000-square-foot showrooms in Bakersfield, Templeton, and Clovis and the owners plan new stores in Fresno and an unnamed city] for 2017…[The showrooms sell 50% to 60% of] the 100 solar installations Bland contracts each month…[Bernadette del Chiaro, executive director of the solar association, said the]
showroom approach is the direction the industry is headed with the likes of SolarCity merging with Tesla Motors for one-stop home-energy shopping…”click here for more

“…[T]he first technical and economic analysis of distributed wind power’s potential in the U.S…[shows] that distributed wind could be installed at millions of locations nationwide and has the technical potential to power the entire U.S. electrical system…Distributed wind typically means smaller wind turbines installed at homes, farms, businesses, and public facilities where they serve to reduce consumer’s electric bills…Distributed wind power’s total addressable resource potential is comparable to wind farms and offshore wind, potentially supporting millions of systems and thousands of gigawatts of power production capacity…[and] exceeds total U.S. electricity demand…Major increases in electricity production (and corresponding rural economic development) from this sector are quite possible, especially with policies that have been successful with solar…”click here for more

Friday, November 25, 2016

A Picture Of Climate Change

“…I was on an expedition exploring Franz Josef Land archipelago. There was a polar station where people brought dogs as guards against polar bears. The summer is a difficult time for bears. In recent years, warming in the Arctic resulted in the loss of sea ice, which is critically important for bears as they can hunt only from ice. The bears which stay on the islands are doomed to meager rations and go to human settlements. Global warming changes behavior of animals, which can lead to conflict between people and bears…Vladimir Melnik/National Geographic Your Shot”click here for more

Japan’s Toyota Targets Longer Range EV

“Toyota Motor Corp said it aims to develop a more advanced [lithium-ion] electric-car battery ‘in a few years’ that will allow the Japanese automaker to build vehicles with up to 15 percent greater range and battery life than they have currently…Improving the performance of lithium-ion battery technology is a pressing issue for traditional automakers such as Toyota and new entrants such as Tesla Motors Inc because of its limiting characteristics…Producers of all-electric battery cars, plug-in electric hybrids, as well as conventional gas-electric hybrids are all striving to source or develop more advanced battery technologies to improve range, battery life and safety…Toyota, Japan’s biggest automaker by volume, has pioneered gasoline-electric hybrid technology and is gearing up to launch a new, near-all-electric plug-in hybrid called the Prius Prime. It is also aiming to come up with an all-electric battery car by about 2020…”click here for more

Spain’s Bay of Biscay Wave Harvest

“…A British-Spanish collaborative research team has completed] the final section of Oceantec's 30-kW wave energy system at the Bay of Biscay [Biscay Marine Energy Platform (BiMEP) for testing and demonstrating ocean energy devices] on the northern coast of Spain…[The Marmok-5 device was commissioned after the team] successfully installed a monitoring system that would provide high-resolution measurement of mooring tensions and device motions…[The several year, several phase] project has received support under OPERA (Open Sea Operating Experience to Reduce Wave Energy Cost), the EU’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme…”The Biscay Marine Energy Platform (click here for more)

Morocco’s Green Revolution

“…[Solar power is the obvious but not the only New Energy opportunity] in Morocco…For 80% of the year the wind blows at 17-20 miles per hour…[Big name wind industry players including Siemens and LafargeHolcim have been attracted to the resource and the] nation's pledge to produce 50% of electricity from renewable sources by 2030…German engineering giant Siemens has invested $109 million into the Moroccan energy market, building a manufacturing plant for the giant 207-feet-long wind turbine blades…[According to LafargeHolcim, its Tetouan cement plant, southeast of Tangier, is the first of its kind in the world to be powered by wind energy. Financed by the company's $50 million investment in Moroccan clean energy, 23 turbines produce 32 megawatts -- approximately 70% of the cement factory's needs…Those figures are small fry when compared to the Tangier wind farm, the second largest in Africa, which has nearly four times the capacity…[The kingdom's policy to have 50% of its energy mix coming from sustainable energy is pushing all the players] to innovate, according to the CEO of LafargeHolcim Marocco…”Morocco’s wind and solar resources (click here for more)

Thursday, November 24, 2016

President Obama Pardons His Last Turkey

NewEnergyNews is so grateful to so many…beginning with the Marks family foundation…to the inimitable Frenchie and her Juliette…to the enduring Randolph and the Scott clan…to Pete and my inspiring brothers at Akbar…to the blessed cowgirls of Carousel Ranch…to the giving grace of Amelia…and to the possibilities of Eily and her gift Melissa…

Also to Cyndi, Molly, Russ, Lydia, and the Cowboy Country dancers, and to Ann, Suzie, Sandy, Nancy, all the Cowboy Palace dancers, and to Bebe and Carol, may they dance forever with the angels…to the uber Untersehers of Pasadena…to Teri in Austin…and to the brilliant editors and the staff at Utility Dive…

Can’t forget the many many innovators and builders working to harvest the power of this good earth’s wind, sun, deep heat, and flowing waters for sharing themselves and their stories from the front lines of the fight to build a New Energy world…to the hardworking people who run utilities and grid systems and keep the lights on…and to Nancy L. and the fighters for a cooler climate, may they find the strength to fight on in this new era...

To the remarkable President Obama, who history will remember as one of the greatest…

And, of course, to the especially astute readers who keep clicking on this page…

May all of you always count your blessings and may a kind fate lead you to your own personal pot of gold at the end of the rainbow…

Editor’s note: Since this story ran, the first U.S. offshore wind project went into service off Rhode Island and new projects are now being planned along the Atlantic coast.

There are over 4,000 GWs of renewable energy potential – over four times the total U.S. electricity demand – resting just a few miles from the biggest population centers in the country and little has been done to harvest it. U.S. offshore wind has been on the verge of getting started for years while industries in Europe and China grow stronger. But Deepwater Wind just brought its 30 MW Block Island pilot project online by the end of 2016 and many say continued backing of the Department of Energy and Bureau of Ocean Wind Management (BOEM) could help U.S. developers harness the plentiful, but pricey, potential of offshore wind. Under the “Smart from the Start” program that pre-identifies areas with the best development prospects, BOEM has issued leases for tracts of ocean on the nation’s outer continental shelf that offer an estimated installed capacity of at least 5,768 MW and possibly as much as 13,538 MW.

Global offshore wind set an installation record in 2015, upping its 1,069 MW performance in 2014 to at least 3,996 MW, largely in Europe and Asia. Cumulative global capacity is now over 11,800 MW and it is on track to reach as much as 47,000 MW by 2020. While no U.S. projects have been completed, there are 21 projects representing 15,650 MW of capacity in development. Thirteen of those, representing 5,939 MW, are in some degree of advanced development). Developers with projects totaling 3,305 MW say they will be online by 2020. DOE’s Wind Vision, a long-term look at the U.S. wind industry, forecasts deployment of 22,000 MW of offshore wind by 2030 and 86,000 MW by 2050. Future deployment, it says, will be along the Atlantic, Pacific, and Gulf of Mexico coasts and in the Great Lakes… click here for more

Plug-in Hybrids: The Cars that will ReCharge America by Sherry Boschert: "Smart companies plan ahead and try to be the first to adopt new technology that will give them a competitive advantage. That’s what Toyota and Honda did with hybrids, and now they’re sitting pretty. Whichever company is first to bring a good plug-in hybrid to market will not only change their fortune but change the world."

Oil On The Brain; Adventures from the Pump to the Pipeline by Lisa Margonelli: "Spills are one of the costs of oil consumption that don’t appear at the pump. [Oil consultant Dagmar Schmidt Erkin]’s data shows that 120 million gallons of oil were spilled in inland waters between 1985 and 2003. From that she calculates that between 1980 and 2003, pipelines spilled 27 gallons of oil for every billion “ton miles” of oil they transported, while barges and tankers spilled around 15 gallons and trucks spilled 37 gallons. (A ton of oil is 294 gallons. If you ship a ton of oil for one mile you have one ton mile.) Right now the United States ships about 900 billion ton miles of oil and oil products per year."

NOTEWORTHY IN THE MEDIA:
NewEnergyNews would welcome any media-saavy volunteer who would like to re-develop this section of the page. Announcements and reviews of film, television, radio and music related to energy and environmental issues are welcome.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades by Mark S. Friedman

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The American Decades, the second volume of Herman K. Trabish’s retelling of oil’s history in fiction, picks up where the first book in the series, OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction, left off. The new book is an engrossing, informative and entertaining tale of the Roaring 20s, World War II and the Cold War. You don’t have to know anything about the first historical fiction’s adventures set between the Civil War, when oil became a major commodity, and World War I, when it became a vital commodity, to enjoy this new chronicle of the U.S. emergence as a world superpower and a world oil power.

As the new book opens, Lefash, a minor character in the first book, witnesses the role Big Oil played in designing the post-Great War world at the Paris Peace Conference of 1919. Unjustly implicated in a murder perpetrated by Big Oil agents, LeFash takes the name Livingstone and flees to the U.S. to clear himself. Livingstone’s quest leads him through Babe Ruth’s New York City and Al Capone’s Chicago into oil boom Oklahoma. Stymied by oil and circumstance, Livingstone marries, has a son and eventually, surprisingly, resolves his grievances with the murderer and with oil.

In the new novel’s second episode the oil-and-auto-industry dynasty from the first book re-emerges in the charismatic person of Victoria Wade Bridger, “the woman everybody loved.” Victoria meets Saudi dynasty founder Ibn Saud, spies for the State Department in the Vichy embassy in Washington, D.C., and – for profound and moving personal reasons – accepts a mission into the heart of Nazi-occupied Eastern Europe. Underlying all Victoria’s travels is the struggle between the allies and axis for control of the crucial oil resources that drove World War II.

As the Cold War begins, the novel’s third episode recounts the historic 1951 moment when Britain’s MI-6 handed off its operations in Iran to the CIA, marking the end to Britain’s dark manipulations and the beginning of the same work by the CIA. But in Trabish’s telling, the covert overthrow of Mossadeq in favor of the ill-fated Shah becomes a compelling romance and a melodramatic homage to the iconic “Casablanca” of Bogart and Bergman.

Monty Livingstone, veteran of an oil field youth, European WWII combat and a star-crossed post-war Berlin affair with a Russian female soldier, comes to 1951 Iran working for a U.S. oil company. He re-encounters his lost Russian love, now a Soviet agent helping prop up Mossadeq and extend Mother Russia’s Iranian oil ambitions. The reunited lovers are caught in a web of political, religious and Cold War forces until oil and power merge to restore the Shah to his future fate. The romance ends satisfyingly, America and the Soviet Union are the only forces left on the world stage and ambiguity is resolved with the answer so many of Trabish’s characters ultimately turn to: Oil.

Commenting on a recent National Petroleum Council report calling for government subsidies of the fossil fuels industries, a distinguished scholar said, “It appears that the whole report buys these dubious arguments that the consumer of energy is somehow stupid about energy…” Trabish’s great and important accomplishment is that you cannot read his emotionally engaging and informative tall tales and remain that stupid energy consumer. With our world rushing headlong toward Peak Oil and epic climate change, the OIL IN THEIR BLOOD series is a timely service as well as a consummate literary performance.

Review of OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, The Story of Our Addiction by Mark S. Friedman

"...ours is a culture of energy illiterates." (Paul Roberts, THE END OF OIL)

OIL IN THEIR BLOOD, a superb new historical fiction by Herman K. Trabish, addresses our energy illiteracy by putting the development of our addiction into a story about real people, giving readers a chance to think about how our addiction happened. Trabish's style is fine, straightforward storytelling and he tells his stories through his characters.

The book is the answer an oil family's matriarch gives to an interviewer who asks her to pass judgment on the industry. Like history itself, it is easier to tell stories about the oil industry than to judge it. She and Trabish let readers come to their own conclusions.

She begins by telling the story of her parents in post-Civil War western Pennsylvania, when oil became big business. This part of the story is like a John Ford western and its characters are classic American melodramatic heroes, heroines and villains.

In Part II, the matriarch tells the tragic story of the second generation and reveals how she came to be part of the tales. We see oil become an international commodity, traded on Wall Street and sought from London to Baku to Mesopotamia to Borneo. A baseball subplot compares the growth of the oil business to the growth of baseball, a fascinating reflection of our current president's personal career.

There is an unforgettable image near the center of the story: International oil entrepreneurs talk on a Baku street. This is Trabish at his best, portraying good men doing bad and bad men doing good, all laying plans for wealth and power in the muddy, oily alley of a tiny ancient town in the middle of everywhere. Because Part I was about triumphant American heroes, the tragedy here is entirely unexpected, despite Trabish's repeated allusions to other stories (Casey At The Bat, Hamlet) that do not end well.

In the final section, World War I looms. Baseball takes a back seat to early auto racing and oil-fueled modernity explodes. Love struggles with lust. A cavalry troop collides with an army truck. Here, Trabish has more than tragedy in mind. His lonely, confused young protagonist moves through the horrible destruction of the Romanian oilfields only to suffer worse and worse horrors, until--unexpectedly--he finds something, something a reviewer cannot reveal. Finally, the question of oil must be settled, so the oil industry comes back into the story in a way that is beyond good and bad, beyond melodrama and tragedy.

Along the way, Trabish gives readers a greater awareness of oil and how we became addicted to it. Awareness, Paul Roberts said in THE END OF OIL, "...may be the first tentative step toward building a more sustainable energy economy. Or it may simply mean that when our energy system does begin to fail, and we begin to lose everything that energy once supplied, we won't be so surprised."

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